133 Mastermind James Altucher Reveals Secret to Success

"Success is measured in decades, not years." - James Altucher If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes (including all the book links he recommends) and more at www.lewishowes.com/133. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 133 with James Altucher.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  What's up everyone? Thank you so much for joining me today on the School of Greatness podcast. Now in this episode, we've got my friend back for the third time. He's actually been on four times, but one of the times he was interviewing me. So this is the third time we're going to have James back. He's always up to big things. And I'm asking him some different things than I've asked him ever before. And in this episode, you're going to learn some powerful things, how he learned to go with his gut. When interviewing all of the guests on his podcast, we talk about his process for getting his guests to put their armor down and share their journey and how you can do this the same when building relationships. Why you should never do work for just money, luxury, or girls.

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  He makes a specific point and shares some interesting stories on why you should never, ever be in work or do business just for money, for luxury, or girls. I think you guys are really going to like that part. The reactions he has gotten from his family and friends to what he writes about, because he writes and shares very openly. Why he says you should never listen to feedback, which is a little bit different than my perspective of listening to feedback and seeing what lands for you. So we have a little debate about that. How the gatekeepers have gone away in publishing and creative work and all the different things that he's been investing in lately. And also what he believes is going to be happening in the future with business trends.

• 1:59Lewis Howes?

  I think you guys are going to get a lot out of this episode. Make sure to dive in, make sure to take notes, share it with your friends. And let me introduce you to the one and only James Altucher.

• 2:15Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited today, we've got the man James Altucher on. How's it going, James?

• 2:22James Altucher?

  Lewis, thanks for having me back on the show. Am I, how many repeat guests have you had on your show?

• 2:26Lewis Howes?

  I've only had like three or four, and you are the one who's now has the most. I think this is our fourth time on.

• 2:31James Altucher?

  Really?

• 2:31Lewis Howes?

  I think so.

• 2:32James Altucher?

  I'm really honored.

• 2:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, well, because we had you on for Choose Yourself.

• 2:35James Altucher?

  Yeah.

• 2:35Lewis Howes?

  Then you flipped the script on me and interviewed me on my episode.

• 2:38James Altucher?

  Right.

• 2:39Lewis Howes?

  Then we had you for the No book.

• 2:42James Altucher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:42Lewis Howes?

  Power of No, and now this is number four.

• 2:44James Altucher?

  That was recent, too.

• 2:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and this is number four. But you're one of the most intelligent guys that I've ever met.

• 2:50James Altucher?

  Oh, thank you.

• 2:51Lewis Howes?

  And it's always inspiring to have, if I can get 30 minutes with James Altucher, I want to take it. So I was like, James, I'm in New York for the month. Let's find a time to get you on the show. And we booked the room, or you booked the room and now we're here, so.

• 3:03James Altucher?

  Excellent.

• 3:04Lewis Howes?

  I'm excited to have you back on to hear what you've been up to. It's your one year anniversary, my two year anniversary of our podcasts. You've got two podcasts, The James Altucher Show and Ask Altucher. And I want to ask you a little bit about the podcast first. I want to ask you, what's the biggest lessons you've learned about yourself since doing the podcast? You've interviewed a lot of people, you've also done a lot of shorter Ask Altucher shows. But what is the biggest lesson you've learned about yourself in the last year through this journey? Not with the books you've written, but just the podcast?

• 3:38James Altucher?

  You know, I think, I think two things. One is sort of internal to me, and the other one is sort of more external, like a different way to live my life. And the internal thing is that I have to be really comfortable with the person and not be afraid of, whenever somebody, whenever somebody talking, whenever somebody is talking and I get curious, I have to be comfortable interrupting. So my first couple of podcasts, people would write to me and say, you're interrupting too much. And I got a little nervous, like, oh, maybe I shouldn't do that. And I was really catering to the audience. But then I realized, you know what? I'm just really curious about something he said. And every guest has their media message that they want to get through.

• 4:20James Altucher?

  And I have to be able to stop that media message and get into reality. Like, so. I'll just give you an example like um and this is like a crazy example so Coolio the rapper was on my show. And he starts talking about drugs or he's no he started talking about how he was going through some hard times. And I got curious well what do you mean and he said well I was taking a lot of cocaine. And I'm like well what happened and he said well then I got off of it. How do you get off of cocaine I don't know how to do it tell me how to do it so. So if something like really makes me like almost. Um have this urge to find that an answer I'm never gonna have the opportunity again to ask Julio how he got off of.

• 5:00Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 5:01James Altucher?

  Okay so I'm just gonna make sure I take advantage of this time. Because you know life is short it's not like I'm gonna call him up afterwards and say hey yo I just wanted to chat some more about this one thing. And you know it that became kind of a an ongoing process where I learned better and better how to. Just let my curious curiosity run wild so like for instance when Tony Robbins came on I knew he was gonna have. And I wanted him to get at his message about the book money and his problems with how. Uh you know people deal with their money and the financial crisis and so on but what I really wanted to know. Bill Clinton was the first blurb on his book.

• 5:40James Altucher?

  What the hell does he talk to Bill Clinton about like why did Bill Clinton call him and so we started going down that angle. And it almost it's like he realized what was happening he had this like almost visceral reaction where he shook and he's like wait a second how did we. Even go down this direction and he pulled himself back into the message which again was an important message I wanted him to express it. But I was just really curious about what he and Bill Clinton would talk about.

• 6:07Lewis Howes?

  What did he say he talked about?

• 6:08James Altucher?

  Well you know I I think he he he emphasized that he wasn't uh into politics that much you know Tony Robbins. But you know all of these guys obviously Bill Clinton had issues in his presidency where he needed coaching.

• 6:20Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 6:20James Altucher?

  And so uh uh you know and and all of them do uh and so we started talking about Barack Obama and George Bush and uh. And so it was interesting but that's when he kinda like pulled himself back because these were very confidential conversations he had had with these people.

• 6:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:34James Altucher?

  So um but it was interesting I wanted to know a little bit more about what his life was like as opposed to what his message was like. Because ultimately people have a message but that's like. That's like the tip of the iceberg. And then they have, you know, when you see the tip of the iceberg, that's one eighth of the iceberg.

• 6:50Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 6:50James Altucher?

  Then the seven eighths you don't see, but that's the part that destroys the Titanic. So I really wanna see what's going on, what their lives are about, and now just what their kind of message is about.

• 7:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 7:02James Altucher?

  So that's important to me.

• 7:03Lewis Howes?

  The thing you said about you got feedback from your audience emails and people saying like, um, quit interrupting, or I wanna hear the person. There's a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to my show. And I think a lot of them, and I speak for myself, I think I can be and other people can be susceptible to what others say they want you to do. And I remember when I started out, people were like, your music is too loud, it sucks, you're interrupting. This like changed all these things, so they're giving you constant feedback. When does an entrepreneur know to trust their own instincts or to do what they wanna do? And also improve to make it better to, to, to meet the entire audience, but also

• 7:45Lewis Howes?

  not to just take every piece of feedback and apply that and then have no voice? How do you know?

• 7:50James Altucher?

  I, I think, I think the answer is you never listen to feedback. So, so, and, and I'm going back now across four or five different businesses that I've started. Uh, and if I'm excited about a business, then I'm going to know more than anyone else. What, and I'm looking at all the, because I'm excited, I'm looking at all the analytics, I'm looking at all the feedback. I'm gonna know more than anyone else what excites me and what I should add. So one time, for instance, I made a business that revolved around a financial media site. And, um, I was getting feedback all the time, how to improve, uh, this site. I ignored all of it. Instead, I would put in the features that I wanted in a site. I was a hedge fund manager at the time.

• 8:34James Altucher?

  I, I put in the features that I want, that I, a hedge, a professional financial person wanted in a site, and those were the best features. And those are the features that increased the traffic the most. So now I know. When I have a guest on, if I'm curious about something, that's what I'm going for. That's what you want. That's gonna be the best content. Sure. Now, I might be wrong, but I ca- I won't be, I won't do anything that's better, even if I'm wrong. Right, right, right. So, so if I just listen to what the audience is saying, then it's not gonna be as good as, um, and, and this is not being arrogant about the audience. Sure. They might have speci- like, one person out of a hundred thousand might have a specific thing he might wanna learn from, let's call it Mark Cuban or whoever, but I know what I wanna learn from, from this person.

• 9:19James Altucher?

  And so I'm going to ask it, cuz these might be questions I've had for seventeen years. Yeah. About Mark Cuban, cuz I, I used to work with, uh, broadcast.com, his company, uh, just as an example. So I might've had questions in my mind for eighteen years. Wow. And I'm gonna ask him those questions. Sure. No matter what the audience is gonna say. So, so that's something I got better with myself, and I've been a professional interviewer before. For HBO, I did a project. Wow. Where my job was to interview essentially prostitutes on the street at three in the morning. Wow. So I had to get really good at, just from a cold start, interviewing people. And like, these people would be in the middle of the night, with, sometimes with guns, and, or people watching them, who were protecting them, and I would just walk up to them and start talking to them.

• 10:02James Altucher?

  And so I had to get them really comfortable very quickly. And so, you know, now it's almost more difficult now because it's not like, al- almost everybody I talk to is used to being interviewed. So they get very quickly, their armor goes on, and they have their message that they have to get across. But I don't want the message, they ca- everybody can read about the message anywhere else. I wanna find out who they are, what, what we've all been through. And Lois, you and I have talked about this now on, on every podcast we've done. We've all been through these low horrible moments. Yes. And so I wanna find out from my guests, how they got through those low horrible moments, because everybody in the world has been through them. Yeah. It doesn't matter how far apart in background they are from me.

• 10:46James Altucher?

  And I'll, I'll bring up again. Even though I've interviewed eighty people or ninety people or whatever, I love bringing up Coolio as an example. Because there is no common ground between Coolio and me at all.

• 10:57Lewis Howes?

  Complete opposites.

• 10:58James Altucher?

  Complete opposites.

• 10:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:59James Altucher?

  And, um, you know, which, and, and it was one of the things that, another thing that he said that almost everybody said, which I ha- I have to always remember every day for myself. He said that, and I, I'm gonna say what he said and then I'm gonna translate it. He said, um, when he, in nineteen seventy-seven, he started writing down rap lyrics every single day. So he was a writer every single day, wrote every morning rap lyrics. But it wasn't until like nineteen ninety-three or nineteen ninety-four, they, he had his first hit. Uh, and it wasn't until nineteen ninety, then, then nineteen ninety-five, of course, he had the best-selling song in the world, Gangster's Paradise. So.

• 11:37Lewis Howes?

  Great song.

• 11:37James Altucher?

  It to- a great song. Took him seventeen years of writing down lyrics every day to have a hit. And so he even said, if you're doing something for money, or for girls, or for luxuries, just forget it. Like, that's not why you do something you love. Now, you could do something for money, um, but you might, it might not be the thing you love.

• 11:57Lewis Howes?

  And you did a lot of those things and it didn't work out at the end.

• 12:00James Altucher?

  Right, well, or I would be extremely unhappy.

• 12:02Lewis Howes?

  Or you went broke, or something would go wrong.

• 12:04James Altucher?

  Something would go totally wrong because I was so unhappy doing these things, and I would deal with people I didn't like.

• 12:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 12:10James Altucher?

  And just from there on down, it goes bad.

• 12:13Lewis Howes?

  What'd he say, money, luxury, and girls? Is that what he said?

• 12:15James Altucher?

  Yeah, yeah. So, so, um, you know, here's a guy who wrote every day because he, just because he loved it. And then he became the best in the world. And then when he was breaking down Gangster's Paradise, he was saying, okay, we combined a little bit of Rakim, we kind of, we're kind, combined a little bit of these, this eighty guy, Big Daddy Kane, we combined a little bit of what was coming up. There was some singing, there was some talking. So he really knew the subtleties better than anyone in the world, and that's why he had the best hit in the world in nineteen ninety-five. So, so, that's just one example. Every single person I spoke to had examples like that, where success cannot be measured like, oh, god, did I write something good today, or bad today, or whatever? You could only measure success in decades.

• 13:00James Altucher?

  Like, you can look back when you're like thirty, forty, fifty, has my success happened because of things I've done over the decades?

• 13:08Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:08James Altucher?

  Now, it doesn't mean, like, I've done different things in my life every year. It doesn't mean you do the same thing. Now, Coolio happened to have done the same thing, but a lot of people do different things. Mark Cuban's an example. He did broadcast.com for like three or four years. He did a hedge fund. He did, he owns a basketball team. He owns a movie company. So he does lots of things, but for him, the overriding umbrella, I think, is he is so savvy about business.

• 13:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:33James Altucher?

  You know, people say all the time, oh, Mark Cuban got lucky. He sold at the top and he sold the shoes. That guy did not get lucky once.

• 13:39Lewis Howes?

  He works hard.

• 13:40James Altucher?

  He, he works hard and he knows. Like, he had a hedge fund in the mid nineties. Most people don't know this about him. He knows when to sell his socks and he knows when markets are topping out. So he knew exactly what to do every step of the way. There was no luck involved.

• 13:53Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:54James Altucher?

  Um, and again, but that was over the course of a decade. He had a bar, then he had a software company, then a hedge fund, then broadcast.com. Now he knows in all these different areas.

• 14:04Lewis Howes?

  Apply the lessons, everything. Yeah, interesting. Something that came up for me during this is, first off, when I'm speaking of feedback, you said never listen to feedback or something like that. But is there ever a moment where you should listen to feedback? And when you're, all of your customers are like, we want this. Or when there's feedback that what you're doing isn't working and that alone should be the feedback to shift something or to adjust. Is there ever a time to listen to feedback? Cause I actually think you should listen to feedback, but you should only listen to, you should only apply what lands for you.

• 14:37James Altucher?

  I, I think that's a good way to put it. So.

• 14:38Lewis Howes?

  Like, listen to all the feedback, but don't shift and change to all the feedback unless it really like hits you like, okay, I could see this working.

• 14:45James Altucher?

  You know, like I've been going through something recently where, um, you know, I see a lot of podcast work where they bring on a guy, you know, all the guests, hundred percent of the guests are people who have gone from zero to millions. And those are always good podcasts and it's always interesting to see. But I haven't really been that interested in that lately. My, my, my interests lately have been, I've been having a lot of, um, writers on and a lot of people who do many things.

• 15:11Lewis Howes?

  Unique individuals, yeah.

• 15:12James Altucher?

  Yeah. So, so my most recent guest, um, or one of my most recent guests is a guy who, he's done a lot of, uh, screenplays. He worked in the film industry, but he was, um, feeling somewhat, uh, bottlenecked. He wanted to really write a fiction, write fiction. So he talked about the process of writing, um, his first novel. And, uh, that was interesting to me. It wasn't the typical kind of zero to 10 million.

• 15:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:36James Altucher?

  Uh, story. And I wanted to learn about his process. I wanted to learn, uh, uh, about what he did because, you know, he was busy with his full-time job. How did he find time to? You know, write a novel. So all that was something that was really interesting personally to me. And if I had just gone by what I see in the analytics of the podcasting world, I probably would not have had him on. But it was just so interesting to me. He basically, uh, the guy's name's David Levine. He basically wrote his novel on the commute to work. And it was very interesting because he said, I was on the commute to work from Connecticut to New York. And everybody was either sleeping or reading the New York Post or whatever. And I didn't wanna just waste this hour back and forth each each day.

• 16:19James Altucher?

  And so he took out his laptop and he started writing. And within three years, within three years, again, success is measured in years or decades. And he wrote a novel that became a bestseller. So, yeah, so people always say, oh, I don't have the time to do that. Here's a guy who it was so important to him to write fiction that he he got it done and he he wrote it during that time.

• 16:40Lewis Howes?

  And he had two hours a day to do it.

• 16:42James Altucher?

  Two hours a day to do it that, look, I commute also. I see what he's seeing.

• 16:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:47James Altucher?

  You know, but it's it's hard. You think to yourself, oh, I woke up so early. Now I'm commuting. I'm tired. But he just forced himself to do it.

• 16:54Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting.

• 16:54James Altucher?

  So you learn you learn a lot by by getting all types. And also you learn a lot by following your passion. So, look, I'd like to write a novel maybe, or I'd like to do standup comedy, so I would have comedians on. Or I'd like to, I don't know, um, look, I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid. So I had an astronaut on my podcast, like.

• 17:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 17:15James Altucher?

  And what was great here, again, it's the measure it in decades and not years.

• 17:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:20James Altucher?

  He applied for NASA for fifteen years in a row. And they rejected him every time. And so finally, on the sixteenth try, they accepted him. And then it's another bunch of years after that before, you don't even know, just because you get into NASA, maybe they just put you in the engineering room. You don't even know if you're gonna go into space or not. So it was another several years after that, and finally he became an astronaut. So, so like twenty years after he first started, and probably forty years after he first wanted it. And, uh, you know, things like that are important to me because. Often I think I judge myself. Not only is the feedback from my audience affect me, but my feedback from myself, I judge myself too harshly.

• 17:59Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 18:00James Altucher?

  And, uh, you know, Louis, we just spoke about the importance of having friends and family and people around you who love and support you. This is the most important thing that's underneath all of this, which is you can't write lyrics every day for seventeen years with no success. You can't apply for NASA every year for fifteen years with no success. You have to have people around you who say, I believe in you, I love you, I support you. Maybe here's what you can do differently, and that's what you're talking about, like, does this land well with me? But it's constructive criticism as opposed to like,

• 18:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:36James Altucher?

  Oh, this sucks, you should do it this way. So, you know, we all are social creatures, you know, we grew up. Yeah, you know, when I say we grew up, Homo sapiens for three million years or for hundreds of thousands of years grew up in tribes. We, we survived in a tribal structure. We need the help of the tribe and the people we surround, uh, that we have around us are our tribe. And that's, you, we're fortunate enough now because we live in a big world that we can pick and choose. We don't have to just hang out in the tribe we're born in. We can pick and choose who are the members of our tribe that we're gonna try to conquer the world with.

• 19:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:13James Altucher?

  And I think that's, that's another critical thing I've learned.

• 19:15Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 19:18Lewis Howes?

  Some of the most successful people that I can think of are really good at asking the right questions. And through this process of my podcast, I feel like I've gotten better at learning how to ask the right questions where I'm gonna get the most knowledge. Away from it. You've got a lot of years on me, a lot of experience of asking questions, and I think of like Oprah, and I think of, uh, you know, you talk show host, she's really good at it. Uh, Larry King, I think he was really great at it as well, still is.

• 19:44James Altucher?

  I think, you know, Howard Stern's really great at it.

• 19:46Lewis Howes?

  He is good, it's just a different result that he's getting from people.

• 19:49James Altucher?

  A lot of people don't like the results that he are, that he's getting. So what I do, and I, and I don't necessarily know one way or the other, but when I, when I watch a la- a Howard Stern interview. It's really fascinating to see how he, he's very curious.

• 20:05Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 20:06James Altucher?

  It's interesting to see, at first, the guest doesn't want to tell him what he wants to hear. So he backs off, but then he gets back, he finds another way to get back in there.

• 20:15Lewis Howes?

  It's really good.

• 20:16James Altucher?

  So he is the master interviewer, I think.

• 20:19Lewis Howes?

  What have you learned about asking questions and creating an environment? Because I think when we just did our interview, you create a great environment for me to feel open and wanting to share. How did you learn how to create the environment, to ask the right questions? And then, how do you know what questions to ask?

• 20:36James Altucher?

  You know, so, so.

• 20:37Lewis Howes?

  Whether it be a podcast, or business, or relationships, or whatever, just in life.

• 20:42James Altucher?

  Right, so, so I'll answer the second question first. So, research is everything. So, you know, usually before a podcast, I'll read everything that they've written. I'll be able to break it down. I'll know what they've written, maybe even better than they know what they've written. Because, once they write something, they, people forget it. But, you know, when I had Nassim Taleb on my podcast, I had read everything he had written, including like some of his more esoteric mathematical stuff, just to kind of compare and see the direction his thought had gone over the years. And then to kind of take it another level. Like, he wrote this book, Anti-Fragile, about how economic systems would be stronger if they were built so that if they were hit hard, they would actually become stronger.

• 21:26James Altucher?

  As opposed to the US economic system, which he says fell apart when it was hit hard. But I didn't want to know about economics. I took it one step further. I thought I was fragile. So I, I don't really get colds, for instance, or I don't get sick or anything. I've never been to a hospital. So, yeah, I'm not gonna worry. So, so I asked him, what should I do? I'm afraid the second I get sick, I'm just gonna completely collapse. Like, I'm just gonna be a pain in the neck. I'm gonna get even more sick. I'm not even gonna know what's gonna happen. And he actually suggested, you should try to figure out how to get like a little bit sick, so that you can.

• 22:00Lewis Howes?

  Build up your.

• 22:01James Altucher?

  Yeah, build up your anti-fragility. And he said, for instance, for, so he had never written about this in his books, but he started talking about his own personal anti-fragility system. Like, he would walk. On um rough, like he said, our ancestors didn't walk on flat surfaces. So he made sure he would walk on like, yeah, or or just in general, like hills and stuff. For twenty hours a week, uh, so that's his like exercise program. Uh, and you know, we would talk about different things like that, or or he talked about the paleo diet. He said paleo is fine, but it's not paleo. Our ancestors did not eat a a solid breakfast, lunch, dinner. Often they would go for, you know, a day or two without eating if they hadn't been hunting or gathering or whatever.

• 22:45James Altucher?

  So if you really wanna do paleo diet, you have to be anti fragile in how you eat. You have to fast occasionally. So, you know, we talked about all the, so that's how you get, the the research got me interesting, interesting questions there. Other times, it's just what, I'm so curious, I'm just annoyed. Like, they're not telling me something and I need to know. So, uh, you know, so for instance, Peter Thiel, uh, we had a podcast scheduled and it was a great podcast. One of my favorite podcasts and his book Zero to One is is an amazing book, uh, like a real eye opening book. But he was an hour late for the interview and I'm fine with that, like, he's a busy guy. I actually wasn't so busy that day, so I was totally fine.

• 23:28James Altucher?

  Um, but what I really wanted to know, or the very first question I asked is, what were you doing the past hour? Like, I needed to know. And he told me, he was looking at, um, you know, advances in kind of, uh, financial technology, which started my, which is what he's always been doing, like PayPal, of course, was an advance in financial technology. So what's the next step in that? And it made me start thinking about that and in terms of my own investing and and thinking and so on. So, so if I get really curious about something, I really wanna know what the answer is.

• 23:59Lewis Howes?

  What's something, so I want you to think about the first thing that comes to mind when I ask you this question. What is something that you've been wanting to share about yourself that no one's asked you?

• 24:11James Altucher?

  You know, I share so much on my blog.

• 24:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:15James Altucher?

  That.

• 24:15Lewis Howes?

  You do share a lot and your Facebook posts are great.

• 24:18James Altucher?

  Yeah, thank you. Uh, I actually don't even use my blog anymore. I use Facebook as my blog, like I barely post on my blog anymore. But I share so much there that. I don't even know what I haven't shared there like you know one thing is I don't ever. Uh, I don't ever wanna harm anybody.

• 24:36Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 24:36James Altucher?

  Uh, you know, I never wanna say anything bad about somebody, which maybe is a a cop out, but I think you can. You can be sharing without hurting somebody.

• 24:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:43James Altucher?

  Um, because that's often you wanting revenge rather than you really hurting somebody. So I never talk about my ex-wife really, I I rarely talk about my kids. Uh, one time I did actually say something embarrassing about one of my kids. And she called me on it and she was upset, so I never say anything bad about my kids. Um, but even then.

• 25:05Lewis Howes?

  Is there any questions that that that you wanted to answer that you haven't verbally?

• 25:10James Altucher?

  No.

• 25:11Lewis Howes?

  You shared it all?

• 25:12James Altucher?

  Nothing, I mean, people ask and I usually just answer like, uh. Uh, I don't, I don't really say why I got divorced. I don't really say, um. You know, I don't really talk much about my fam- you know, a lot, a lot of my family has not liked my blog. Uh, and how much I've shared, so even if I don't say something about them, they don't like the fact that it happened so uh revealing. And so they'll, in in many cases, people close to me have stopped talking to me and I usually don't talk about that.

• 25:42Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 25:42James Altucher?

  Um, you know, one, I I I had a post that was very uh anti-war. And it's not that I'm against the soldiers, it's not that I'm against any politicians, um. I'm just, I just simply would never think of a scenario where I would send my fifteen-year-old daughter to a war. Uh, and.

• 26:03Lewis Howes?

  That a simple conversation could resolve.

• 26:05James Altucher?

  Right, and so one really close friend of mine uh took that to mean that I was for slavery.

• 26:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:13James Altucher?

  So because that must mean, cause he concluded I must mean I was against the civil war, so it must mean I'm for slavery. Uh, and he stopped, literally stopped talking to me, and so I did call him and I say, don't you think, you know, we've known each other twenty years, don't you think you should have? You obviously know I'm not for slavery, like, don't you think you should have called me before saying what you said and? But anyway, he doesn't talk to me anymore.

• 26:36Lewis Howes?

  When I my first interview was with Robert Greene, who I think you know.

• 26:40James Altucher?

  Yeah, I interviewed him too.

• 26:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:41James Altucher?

  Great guy.

• 26:42Lewis Howes?

  And he talked about, you know, we were talking about it takes like decades to be successful, years, sometimes decades, like you said. He talked about how it took him decades to really figure out what his greatest asset was and what his greatest skill was, I should say, which is writing these unique type of books that he writes now. Cause he was first like a copywriter and then a TV show writer, then a movie writer and like doing different things. And he wrote, I think, novels or something like that. And now he became, he figured out his niche, like his greatest skill, which is writing these type of books and they're very effective for people.

• 27:17James Altucher?

  Yeah, they're excellent.

• 27:18Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is your greatest skill right now after decades of building businesses and making millions and millions, losing it all multiple times, having a family, successful podcast, being in the media, hedge funds, you know, advisor, investor, what do you think is your greatest skill?

• 27:38James Altucher?

  I think my, and it's hard to know, but I think my greatest skill is figuring out what specifically has worked for me in bad times and then communicating that in a way that's entertaining. So that then people either in the worst case, they're entertained and in the best case, they could say, oh, this worked for James. This may or may not work for me, but I might want to try it and see. And then I get, I've gotten the feedback now over the years that often things that have worked for me have worked for others. So I'm able, so that's a case where I do build upon that. And I say, okay, this is feedback that is useful to me because now I should tell more entertaining stories that,

• 28:20James Altucher?

  and combine it with what's worked for me in, um, whether it's succeeding or, uh, coming out from a low point or so on. So I've been very good at that. Like someone says to me, oh, I've got to negotiate this situation. And I say, okay, well, here's what happened to me in a similar situation. Here's how I negotiated it. Take it or leave it, you know, but that's my only, it's not really advice. It's just what I did. So I always say I never give advice. I just say what's worked for me and people should just try what's worked for them.

• 28:49Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 28:49James Altucher?

  But, but I have been through so many different types of situations now. I kind of, um, Immerse myself in different situations. Cause I get interested in something and then I get passionate about it. Like you said, you got passionate about handball and you read everything, you watched everything, you did everything. You showed up uh at their coaching sessions. Um and I do that too. And I do that with, unfortunately, I probably do that with too many things. Um but I've done that with lots of different things. So some things I got good at, some things I didn't get good at.

• 29:23Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. You know, I love reading your Facebook posts because I feel like you talk about a lot of great lessons that you've been through. Usually hilarious lessons. And your headlines are always incredibly hilarious. I just wanna like save them and use them for something. But I also follow you a lot on Facebook. Cause I'm always, I always feel like you're speaking into what we should be looking forward to in the future. What might be happening in the future. And we were talking about trends with why we started our podcast earlier. I'm curious to get your thoughts on what do you think is gonna be happening over the next couple of years in business? And what do you think is gonna be, what will set people up to be successful and to win in their business if they do what things?

• 30:03James Altucher?

  You know, it's interesting because a lot of people that we know, uh including you and uh potentially including me. Are in the information products business.

• 30:13Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 30:14James Altucher?

  Like we, we, and that's, that's really great because that's one trend that has gotten bigger and bigger, particularly in the past five years. And it's just gonna only get bigger, uh which is, and the trend is basically all the gatekeepers have gone away. Uh there's, there still are publishers, there still are TV networks, there still are creative agencies. But they're like the walking dead, like they don't know that they're already dead. Because you could just publish something and you don't even have to publish it on Amazon. You can just publish it on your website. And I mean Louis CK does this before he, before he releases something to HBO now. He publishes it for five dollars on his website and you could just download it there. And so all those gatekeepers are gone. I think that's an important trend.

• 30:55James Altucher?

  I think everybody who thinks they need to be chosen should take a look around and decide not to do that. And you look and book publishing is the most obvious. Like uh E L James Fifty Shades of Grey, that was originally self-published. Hugh Howie's Wool, which is gonna be a Ridley Scott movie, um that was originally self-published. Uh The Martian, which is like the most science, popular science fiction novel this year by Andy Weir. That was originally self-published. You know, and then you could kind of. Pick and choose who's gonna publish you, you know, you put out so much work uh over the course of years and then you decide.

• 31:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:31James Altucher?

  You know, what what major media companies who have, but that's your choice, like, okay, now I'm gonna get distribution to this audience.

• 31:37Lewis Howes?

  Not hoping that someone chooses me.

• 31:39James Altucher?

  Right, right, you make them, you know, want you rather than, you know, begging for them to choose you.

• 31:44Lewis Howes?

  And only get the deal that I want.

• 31:46James Altucher?

  Ri- right, exactly.

• 31:47Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to be like, okay, I'll take whatever they give me.

• 31:49James Altucher?

  Like, for instance, I just had a major publisher call me and wanted to republish Choose Yourself, which has been out for a year and a half.

• 31:55Lewis Howes?

  Sold two hundred thousand.

• 31:57James Altucher?

  Yeah, over twenty thousand copies. And I explained to her, like, you don't need to do this, like, it's it's already out, like, it's already, everybody's already bought it. And, you know, maybe you can reach a higher audience. And she's like, no, no, I really wanna, we we really wanna do it. This is a major publishing company. And um but then she came back to me with a whole list of questions and, you know, it would have taken me like two hours to like figure out her questionnaire. And so I just decided I don't need that, like, I could just put it, I, it's it's doing well, it's still. A number one in one of its categories, it sells every day. So uh with other books, though, I might decide to use a publisher, who knows? You know, that's one trend. The other trend that I think is really important, this is, this is hard for the average entrepreneur to do.

• 32:42James Altucher?

  But it's something that people should look for. Let me ask you what kind of phone you have?

• 32:45Lewis Howes?

  iPhone six.

• 32:47James Altucher?

  That's an iPhone six. Why did you upgrade?

• 32:49Lewis Howes?

  I wanted a better camera, I wanted it to be faster, I wanted it to be s- smaller, I wanted it to be better in general.

• 32:55James Altucher?

  So the iPhone six has the same processor in it that a Samsung S three has. So it's two years old, that Samsung S three. So you upgraded to a phone that e- everybody else got two years ago who were buying Samsung. Not to criticize your choice, maybe you're, you're you're tuned into the whole Apple infrastructure, so you wanted to stay with that. But a lot of people this year, I, for instance, I did not really upgrade my phone this year because I couldn't really find any differences. Between last year's models and this year's models. So, but if somebody came to me and said. Here's a phone and the battery life could last a month instead of a day. I'll stand in line to buy that.

• 33:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 33:32James Altucher?

  So, so, but the interesting thing there is that's a chemistry problem. It's not a computer problem. It's how do we get more out of our lithium or how do we find another element to make batteries out of? So it become, so I think all, and you see this even at Tesla, like the, the, you know, Tesla's considered almost a tech company because Elon Musk who comes from a tech background. So he had a big IPO, raised a billion dollars. But now he's building a billion dollar battery factory.

• 33:56Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 33:56James Altucher?

  So he's moving all this kind of tech raised money into the chemistry space. And I really see that's the trend. And it's not a new trend. It was the trend for three thousand years.

• 34:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:07James Altucher?

  That's how we created agriculture. That's how we created the printing press, you know, ink that stays instead of washes away. That's how we've created almost every major invention, except for the past fifty years, which was mostly computers. And, you know, this past ten years was mostly internet. Uh, I think we're gonna get back into everything being mostly chemistry. So that's, that's where I'm putting my money, for instance, on investments.

• 34:30Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. Wow.

• 34:32James Altucher?

  So, so, and, and again, that's almost something I learned from Nassim Taleb, which is, you know, in my podcast. He said, look where, how we do our computing. He said, three thousand years ago, we were writing on our tablets. Now what do we do? We're writing on our tablets.

• 34:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 34:46James Altucher?

  So even though it's of course a computer tablet, it's completely different, but what worked in the past for many years, that's where you can look for the future.

• 34:53Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 34:54James Altucher?

  You know, that's why the, um, people can't operate and improve on themselves. You said earlier, you know, you kind of need a, a coach. Uh, and it's because again, we grew up as a species in a tribe. You know, there's the saying, no man is an island. It's really true. You can't, everybody needs someone to listen to. Everyone needs someone to talk to. Everyone needs people around them who they love. We were talking earlier offline, how the most important decision you can make is who you marry. You know, this is, these are all, this is the basics. You know, when people want to know success, they want to know, okay, well, how do I make my website? That's not success. The success is. Who should be the first person I call on the phone today?

• 35:39James Altucher?

  Who should be the first person I say thank you to today? Who should be, you know, how can I sleep better today because you know, we're human beings, we're we're we have bodies, we're not robots? How can I eat better today and be healthy so I can start coming up with ideas? If you're unhealthy, you're not gonna come up with ideas. If you're not sleeping well, you're gonna be lazy during the day because you're gonna be tired and you're gonna procrastinate and all this stuff. So all these basic things, people need to look back to what the roadblocks, what what what the roadmarks for success were for for ten thousand years before they start thinking about, well, do I need to know Python or Pearl to build my website?

• 36:17Lewis Howes?

  The wrong thing to be focusing on, yeah. I wanna I wanna wrap things up here in a minute, I wanna ask a couple of questions left. If you could talk about, let's say, a couple of things, maybe the three things that are the key to the to being fulfilled and happy on a mostly consistent basis. Obviously, things are gonna happen and maybe you won't be happy for a day or two or a period of time. But what do you say like the the three or four key things that you've seen from all these great people you've interviewed? That play into being fulfilled and being happy a majority of the time and they're like the simple lessons that they follow?

• 36:51James Altucher?

  Well, I think you just said it, which is that you said it twice. You said the majority of the time and you said, um, you know, not every day is gonna be good. I think people need to realize that uh there are down moments that we're humans and just even chemically, we psycho. We can't, it's not like we're gonna have this dopamine rush all the time in our lives. Uh, you know, if you do that, it's like you're taking cocaine every day and even then you crash and burn. So so, you know, you have to realize there are down cycles where you just need to kind of say, okay, I'm having a down cycle and I'm gonna sit by myself and I'm not gonna try to do anything. I'm not gonna judge myself. I'm not gonna, I'm gonna be gentle to myself.

• 37:32James Altucher?

  And be able to handle that. And and that happens at every level. It happens on a daily level. It happens on a career level. Uh, you're just gonna have those moments and it's really important to live through them. And then it's just these other things that we've been talking about, which is, I sleep, we talked about sleep in the other podcast. I sleep nine hours a day. So I'm, I I sleep very early. Sleep hygiene is very important to me. I don't look at a screen for a couple hours before. I don't eat for a couple hours before I sleep. I and and then I always make sure my most productive work happens in the morning. So not right after I get up, but like within two hours after I'm getting up. So that then the rest of the day, I could just make sure I have a solid day and coast to sleep.

• 38:17Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 38:17James Altucher?

  And then so that and then having strong friendships and being grateful. So so whenever I notice uh a complaint coming up in my head, uh I try to replace it uh with gratitude. So a gr- a classic example that is, let's say, uh I'm stuck in traffic coming into the city. I could think to myself, oh, my gosh, this is horrible. Why always am I stuck in traffic? Or I could think to myself, how isn't it so great that I live in such a popular city that everyone else wants to live here too?

• 38:49Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 38:49James Altucher?

  So I'm in the best city in the world, but everyone else wants to be here. So try and and I call this a difficult gratitude problem. So solving difficult gratitude problems is a good way of practicing avoiding complaints, asking good questions of yourself during hard times. And in general, sort of building those blocks for success. And then, of course, I do think reading and and writing ideas down every day is a good way to feed the mind, just like you put, you wanna put good things in your body, you wanna put good things in your mind as well. So I I read every day a a ton of stuff.

• 39:21Lewis Howes?

  Books or online?

• 39:22James Altucher?

  Books only. I don't read anything online. So.

• 39:25Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't count unless it's books.

• 39:27James Altucher?

  Yeah, because again, like if something was written, like like, let's say, tens of thousands of books were written in nineteen sixty or the nineteen sixties. But let's say fifteen of those books have withstood the test of time and are now considered great books. Now I know through millions of of critics and readers, uh these are probably a good fifteen books to start with. So I'll read books, I'll read books published this year, but I I like to have some notion that this is something I could dive into, really learn from, you know, really get some knowledge out of. So there's a few contemporary authors, but mostly authors that are, let's say, a decade or two or more older.

• 40:02Lewis Howes?

  If you could only leave three books behind to your family, to say, these are the books, your grandkids or whatever, these are the books you gotta read. If you could only read three, what would those be?

• 40:11James Altucher?

  Well, they're gonna of of course be three of my own books, so.

• 40:15Lewis Howes?

  Besides your own, so six books.

• 40:16James Altucher?

  Oh, okay, cuz I have.

• 40:20James Altucher?

  My my daughters and I I don't say it in like a self promotional way.

• 40:24Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 40:24James Altucher?

  I I have asked my daughters to read my books, just so this is the advice for them.

• 40:29Lewis Howes?

  That's great. It's interesting cuz Tony Robbins, I asked him this question. And he said three other books and none of his own. And I was like, why not one of your own? He's like, I don't think my books are. You know, as powerful as these other ones or or something like that. And I was like, that's interesting.

• 40:41James Altucher?

  Well, you know.

• 40:44Lewis Howes?

  You said three of your own. I was like, that's cool.

• 40:46James Altucher?

  I specifically have written my books for my children.

• 40:49Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 40:50James Altucher?

  So I want them to see, they don't always know everything about me cuz they're kids.

• 40:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:55James Altucher?

  This is the way for them to learn.

• 40:58Lewis Howes?

  Three other books besides yours.

• 40:59James Altucher?

  Three other books. You know, that's a hard question for me because I probably read. A couple hundred books a year and I don't say this, I I don't always read a hundred percent of a book. But uh I I go.

• 41:11Lewis Howes?

  Just of it, yeah.

• 41:12James Altucher?

  So it's hard to pull out just three that I think are amazing. I don't really know the answer. I I I read, I just, I just read so many.

• 41:20Lewis Howes?

  About one in business?

• 41:22James Altucher?

  Um, I just read one by Stephen Johnson, Where Do Ideas Come From? And another one, um. Uh, I forgot the title, but the subtitle was Six Innovations That Changed History, and it's his most recent book. So Stephen Johnson, I just all all all of a sudden read in the past couple of weeks. I'd never read it before. And I thought they were really interesting.

• 41:43Lewis Howes?

  What about one for your personal development as a man? In your whole life, the one that stands out?

• 41:49James Altucher?

  You know, I like Tony Robbins books.

• 41:51Lewis Howes?

  I do too.

• 41:52James Altucher?

  I would say like Awaken the Giant.

• 41:56James Altucher?

  You know, I that was very valuable to me when I was really at a low point in two thousand one, two thousand two that really got me. Uh, to stop complaining about what was going on in my life and really start figuring out what was gonna get me together. So so and that that really worked, like like self help usually doesn't work, um but his book really worked for me. And his book is, you know, kind of comes from a long ancestry of books that you could trace back to the eighteen hundreds or. Or to the oh oh to to zero or whatever. So but I I like the way he puts things and I like his books. Um, and then for for for entertainment, um, I just, there's just a lot of fiction I think is just really beautiful. So I I. I actually encourage people to read.

• 42:41James Altucher?

  Fiction, because the best writers are fiction writers usually.

• 42:46Lewis Howes?

  You gotta be creative.

• 42:46James Altucher?

  Yeah, and they're and they're focused on writing. So like, someone who's a great nonfiction writer, they're good at something else and then they wrote about it. Someone who's a great fiction writer is good at writing and keeps on writing.

• 42:57Lewis Howes?

  And they wrote about it.

• 42:57James Altucher?

  Yeah, exactly. So so studying, if you wanna be a good writer, studying the best fiction writers is like the best thing to do.

• 43:03Lewis Howes?

  Who's the top two fiction writers?

• 43:06James Altucher?

  So Dennis Johnson, um, has written a bunch of novels, but he wrote a collection of short stories about drug addiction. Um, called Jesus Son, which is by far the best fiction book ever. They made a movie out of it, wasn't good. I hate to be one of those guys, the book's better, but.

• 43:23Lewis Howes?

  But it is better.

• 43:24James Altucher?

  Yeah, and and there's a book out, uh, uh, where they ask writers, what's your ideal bookshelf? And that book, Jesus Son, turns out to be the most popular book, next to Movie Dick, uh, on what people would have on their bookshelf.

• 43:35Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna have to check it out.

• 43:36James Altucher?

  Yeah, and it's it's it's only like a hundred twenty pages or something, like it's a great book of short stories. Um, nothing comes close to that. Uh, and then I've just read tons of stuff, tons of fiction.

• 43:48Lewis Howes?

  I love it, alright. Uh, we'll wrap things up. I wanna acknowledge you for coming back on and for sharing. I feel like every time you come back on. You have a sense of groundedness, like even more so. Like you're more grounded now than you've been in the last couple of years I've known you.

• 44:01James Altucher?

  That could be, uh, I mean.

• 44:03Lewis Howes?

  Maybe it's the time of the day, who does?

• 44:04James Altucher?

  You know, you know, I always say that, uh, for me, my big thing is I write down ideas every day. And that always gives me things to work on and things to think about. And every six months, my life is completely different. So, so you've been, so last time I was on your podcast, there was at least one full iteration of that. And my life really is like a little different from six months ago, so.

• 44:25Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 44:25James Altucher?

  Things happen.

• 44:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's great. What are you most grateful for lately?

• 44:29James Altucher?

  Uh, I'm really grateful for, you know, that's hard because there's always the obvious things. I'm really grateful, like I'm. Still happily married, still happily a father. Uh, but like a lot of the businesses and investments I'm involved in, I really feel are changing the world and doing good things. Uh, I haven't really talked about a lot of them in my podcast or work, but I'm involved with a lot of really great people who are just geniuses doing world-saving things that I'm really grateful for.

• 45:00Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 45:00James Altucher?

  Which I hope will make me money, but at the very least too.

• 45:03Lewis Howes?

  Make an impact.

• 45:03James Altucher?

  Yeah, they're gonna make an impact.

• 45:05Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 45:05James Altucher?

  And I'm really grateful that my own writing, like, just like I'm sure you get, like, I get emails and feedback and, and i- i- it's nice to see when you have an impact. Like, I have an ego and it's nice to, when people share with me what my work has meant to them. And when I, and then even better, even when I'm recognized in the street and like, oh.

• 45:25Lewis Howes?

  I love your podcast.

• 45:27James Altucher?

  So that's great.

• 45:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's cool. Okay, cool. Final question, I think you've asked, answered this three times so far, so this will be the fourth. What's your definition of greatness right now?

• 45:36James Altucher?

  You know, there, I think actually there is no definition of greatness. I think it's one of those things, like, what is the definition of a thought? Like, you can't put a thought under, we know, we all know we think thoughts, right? But you can't put a thought under a microscope and say, this is what it's made of. So I think greatness is something similar to that where, you know, it's just, if I'm, and I, this is what, I'm gonna go back to the message from four podcasts ago. If you're physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy, then that's, right this moment, that's the best predictor of having a great moment the next moment.

• 46:13Lewis Howes?

  I love it.

• 46:14James Altucher?

  I can't predict the future, so that's the only way I can predict, is if right now I have those four things going for me, that's my best predictor of a great tomorrow, a great next week, and so on. Even though I have no idea what those, what tomorrow will look like.

• 46:25Lewis Howes?

  James Otter, thanks for coming on.

• 46:27James Altucher?

  Thank you again, Louis. Once again, fourth podcast, bam, in the can.

• 46:36Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure to go back to the show notes at lewishouse.com/133. If you go there, you'll get this full episode, all the notes we talked about, all the things that James is up to and links back to his site. Again, lewishouse.com/133. Got some big guests coming up. We're gonna have a lot of video podcasts coming out as well that'll be featured back on the blog at lewishouse.com. So make sure to subscribe to me over on YouTube. When you click on the videos, just click on subscribe. If this is your first time coming to the School of Greatness podcast, thank you so much for showing up and for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure to click

• 47:19Lewis Howes?

  that subscribe button on your iPhone or on Stitcher in the podcast app, wherever you are listening, and keep coming back for more because I'm gonna keep bringing you some good stuff. That's the end of today's episode. You guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.